The Tributes of Hogwarts
by Taneva Rose
Summary: "Dark and difficult times lie ahead, but just remember who the real enemy is," Dumbledore says.  When the victors of the Hunger Games stand on Reeta Skeeter's interview stage, facing Hogwarts, and together raise their hands, he knows they listened.
1. The Things Albus Dumbledore Cannot Say

Harry Potter/Hunger Games

The Things Albus Dumbledore Cannot Say

Albus Dumbledore is old and has many secrets he can't tell the boy and the girl who sit in front of him, about to enter the arena a second time. He cannot tell them that the girl's District, Gryffindor, used to be called Virginia and be known for more than cave-ins and starvation. He cannot tell them that there used to be other occasions to bring out the fiddles besides funerals. He certainly cannot say that bravery didn't used to be synonymous with suicide, that Gryffindor used to be the most favored part of America.

He cannot tell Harry that his mother and father's names were Lily and James. That his parents weren't Malfoys at all but Potters—freedom fighters in the Dark Days. He cannot tell him that although Harry was raised in Slytherin, Harry has chosen Gryffindor, because life is about choices, and the moment he kissed the girl from Gryffindor he made his.

He cannot tell them that he hasn't felt anything in sixty years, since he came out of the first arena, but he feels something now, watching the dark-haired boy hold the red head's hand like he won't let anything happen to her. The girl, Ginny, laying her head on the boy's shoulder, more to comfort him than herself. Her eyes gleam sharp as fire-agate.

He cannot tell him what he feels knowing that he's sending the only children he ever cared about to war.

To die.

He cannot tell him that he and Voldemort Snow were sure that they were going to rule the world together. They were brothers, not of blood, but of brain. Knights and princes in the imaginary worlds they created.

Then Albus's little sister was reaped in the very first Hunger Games, and Albus faced nose-to-nose the choice between right and easy.

He still remembers his little sister's shiny new shoes made of fish skin because they couldn't afford leather, and the little tears that fell on them as she sniffled her way up to the platform. Everything about Prim was tiny, and that was enough to convince Albus he couldn't let her go.

He remembers being proud and terrified and feeling that things were different, now that he really was going to protect Prim in the arena. He was going to be a hero. He was even a little excited that he was going to die for something. There was no greater adventure than death, and he knew he would die a hero's death, protecting his little sister.

Unfortunately, he didn't.

Dumbledore feels his age acutely.

Many terrible things happened to Albus Dumbledore in the arena, things he cannot—will not- tell the children. All that matters in the end he failed and his sister is dead, and Voldemort never understood why Dumbledore regretted winning, never understood why Dumbledore refused to talk to him ever again.

But no-he cannot tell his mentees any of this.

Instead, he pats them on the shoulder with his darkened hand (because even Immortality Drugs have side-effects) and says, "Dark and difficult times lie ahead, but just remember who the real enemy is."

When the victors of the Hunger Games stand on Reeta Skeeter's interview stage, facing Hogwarts, and together they raise their hands, in unison, he knows they listened.

Afterwards the lights are off and even Rita has given up spinning this one for the capitol, the blonde girl from the blue-water district, Ravenclaw, comes up to him and presses a small, silver box shaped like a bird into his hand.

"Neville gave it to me," she lies matter a factly. She cannot tell him the real place she found it, because some wounds are even too fresh for her to be honest about.

"Thank you very much, Luna. I thought this was long lost," he says kindly. Because the capitol has taken many things from him, but they will never take his compassion. Apparently they can't take his sister either. For here is her token, her one item she took to remind her of home.

Luna gives him an odd look, one almost of disappointment. "I thought you knew that things are never truly lost." Disappointment morphs into confusion. "You told me that."

He gives a weak smile. "So I did. Thank you for reminding me."

She smiles so wide and bright, that Dumbledore can almost forget that she has lost just as much as he.

He turns his attention to the box, hunger to hear the melody again coursing through him.

Then mockingjay music-box begins to sing.

It's not until the hammers stop dancing over the miniature strings that Albus realizes he's crying.

Luna's tiny hand brushes over his hunched shoulder in comfort, and his lips bow upward into a smile.

It's a smile that holds every color of his life.

A rainbow from tears.


	2. How Luna Really Found the Mockingjay

The Second Tribute

of Ravenclaw

**How Luna Cresta Really Found the Mocking Jay**

On the flag of District 2 is a Raven, but Luna is a child of water.

Sirius-buff, tan, wonderful, Sirus O'Dair who all the girls want-thinks Luna is whimsical like the sea, salty, too. Salty and savory.

For a long time Luna just laughed when Sirius O'Dair said things like that. It was a laugh that started low and ended high. Her upside-down laugh. Much is backwards about Luna Cresta. Inside-out and reversed.

Luna gets the best grades in her class and is easily not just pretty, but beautiful-with all her blond fly-away hairs haloing her face and her big, blue eyes (just another thing like the mother-sea says Sirius).

For all that, Luna has no friends except Sirius. She's got too many words in her head that don't have definitions. It's not that she sees things that aren't real, but that reality is different for her.

The kelp tell her stories of sand-monsters that dance in under-water volcanoes, and she knows that jelly-fish have an affinity for puns, and that most lobsters are very very sad.

Her favorite mythical creature to search for is the mockingjay. She swears it sings to her the same songs that her dead mother used too. She doesn't remember how the song goes, but the mockingjay does.

"Luna, Luna, Luna," Sirius chides. He uses her name three time because it sounds like a spell, also he likes the flow of syllables, the way they tide and crest over each other like waves. "There's no such thing as a mockingjay." But he gives his sunshine laugh all the same.

She splashes him with salt water with her little toe, all her teeth sparkling white. "You don't know that."

He grins. "Yeah, I know a lot more than you do." Scooting across her to the dock, his eyes darken slightly, making clear what exactly it is that he knows. The moment ends as he remembers her childishness, how like a child she still is, he spits, "and mockingjay's don't exist."

She bites her lip, blushing. "You can't know that something doesn't exist until you have proof that it doesn't." Only he grounds her enough to make her feel these earthy feelings.

He groans. Sometimes she frustrates him, but he sings her sea-shanties about white birds looking for land all the same.

When they call her name at the Reaping she gives a little wave and says, "Present," with all the constancy of sea-foam.

But no one laughs when they take Loony-Luna to the Capitol to die, and no one sings either. The people of Ravenclaw didn't know it, but Luna was their moon, their unreal crescent to aspire too, their subtle gravity.

People know Luna was important when Sirius doesn't sing anymore. The girls finally believe what had been only the subtext of whispers. The boy of the sun loves the girl of the moon.

The keels are hauled in a little slower, and the creaking of the schooners sound like groans and the tides come at uneven times.

Even when Luna tames the muttations, skeletal horses, which she gives a names. Perriwinkle, Thestral, Madge, the people of District 2 are sure that Luna still has no chance. She's not a career, she's the exact opposite of a career; she's an artist.

But she's also a girl of the water, and when the tides come in she knows how to swim.

The other two tributes left Alice and Frank Longbottom from District Three are eaten alive by jelly-fish. And Sirius hates himself, that he cheers their deaths, but he has to have her back.

She has to come home no matter the price.

He would pay anything, do anything.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that.

Because when Luna wins she's the one that has to the pay the price for staying alive.

Sirius feels like he's fucking drowning as he watches Lucius Malfoy pry her unto her lap, on TV. Yeah, Sirius admits he's lusted after her, too, but in an innocent way, and even though he loves her he would never ask more of her than what she gives.

Luna may be sixteen and look like she's twenty, but she's still just a kid.

"What a cute couple, two perfect blonds," titters Reeta. "So good for Luna to have a stable older man in her life."

When the reaping comes, Sirius volunteers in place of little Peter Pettigrew. People that don't know Sirius well aren't surprised. He was Career from the first day of elementary school when he bit little Cinna Lupin after he tried to steal his crayons. The people that do know Sirius, little Cinna Lupin and Mags McGonnagle, aren't surprised either.

Sirius is the kind of boy who would do anything to protect the people he loves, and there's only one train to get on the capitol. There's only one ticket that will let you board and it's the kind picked from the bottom of a glass bowl.

Sirius didn't know it but the odds weren't just not in his favor-they were impossible.

Lucius Malfoy makes sure of it. He can't think of a reason other than Sirius O'Dair that Luna wouldn't want to fuck him. He's wealthy (he paid through the nose for her) and he does care for her. (She reminds him of his wife.) So he tucks her in to his cavernous black bed and kisses her on the forehead, thinking how much better it will be for the both of them if Sirius O'Dair dies in the arena. Then he goes to Sponsorship Alley and wagers half his fortune to support a tribute from his home District, Slytherin.

The next morning he watches the opening ceremony with Luna, and his guilt is all encompassing when she kisses him lightly on the cheek for the first time, whispering idly, "Thank you for supporting Sirius, Lucy."

He always hated when she called him that, but when her little hand played with his blond stubble, he finds it endearing. If it were anyone else he would be sure that they were manipulating him with that comment, but his heart sinks as he realizes that she really thinks the gifts the boy is lavished with are from him.

He goes to Sponsorship alley that night to try to take back his gift for Bellatrix, but as that years game-master, Umbridge, informs him. "What's done is done, and it's really better that the right sort of people win this year. None of that pirate riff-raff from the 'Claw. The Lestranges are a good family."

On the third day, all of America gasps Bellatrix Lestrange opens the silver parachute at her feet and pulls out a long silver object-a gun. No sponsor has ever had enough money to give someone a gun. Many of the districts aren't even sure it's legal. (What is legal anyway, except for what Voldemort wants?)

Never has a tribute been more loved than Sirius O'Dair. All of America whispers and gossips, and rouses from their slumber into indignation, that maybe their golden boy won't win the games this year, because how unfair things are has suddenly become very clear.

All except Luna.

She just cries tears as salty as the sea that she hasn't seen in so long. She cries and buries herself into Lucius's chest, until she is plastered across him like a wound.

As Bellatrix pulls out the gun on little Colin Creevy from Gryffindor and Cedric Diggory from Hufflepuff, Luna carves herself into Lucius's embrace, because she needs someone, anyone to hold her.

That's where she is as Sirius O'Dair is shot.

She doesn't see him die, just hears him.

She knows it's him because he's whispering her name, like it's his own, like there is nothing he else he could have said.

"Luna."

This is when Luna stops believing in mockingjays.

But as Luna cries and cries, trying to drown the world with his tears, pouring fourth hurricanes of grief- this is when Lucius starts. He starts believing in mockingjays and morals and revolution.

So Lucius pats her head and soothes her, but at the end of the night he gives a call to Albus Dumbledore.

In the morning he gives Luna the mockingjay music box, and opens up her gilded cage.

Setting her free.


End file.
